


She/It/They

by alafaye



Category: Marvel
Genre: Gender Identity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 20:01:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4450325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alafaye/pseuds/alafaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They had been others, but now they were free to make their choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She/It/They

**Author's Note:**

> It occurred to me--would Natasha have a gender when she left the Red Room?

_I_ was a jumble. 

She had been a little girl, a ballerina with friends and laughter.

It had been part of something greater, but only a tool, a cog. It had been programmed to do the work the greater wanted it to do, no choice, programmed to use the physical form to fight, to sneak, to seduce, to do anything the greater needed it to do.

Then she/it got out, got free, but was nothing, could remember only a vague before and was still only a thing that could harm and maim and kill.

But then there was Clint Barton and Phil Coulson and America which was so confusing.

 _People_ were confusing.

It's physical form was female, woman, _weak_. Except inside this organization where women were strong and yet still seen as weaker than their male counterparts. It was stronger than most of the males, better trained and more focused and more tactical. 

So confusing and it stared at the paperwork for itself. Paperwork the organization had created, gave it an identity.

The identity was it, but it also wasn't.

The agent in charge of it referred it to a specialist when it asked why it didn't match the identity assigned.

The specialist...was helpful but not.

Someone born male, but now female?

The specialist didn't work for the organization.

Well, it had been trained to observe without being observed. It belonged to the organization now, had to know how to fit there, not outside. 

(It couldn't imagine being part of the outside. Outside no one was trained to kill with any item one could get their hands on. Outside, there were too many choices. Choices made it uncomfortable.)

Training meant that it could observe males and females equally in any location without anyone being the wiser. (Except the one with the eye patch, but he seemed amused rather than angry. He said nothing so it took that as permission.)

The situation came to a head though when it discovered one of the females in the male locker rooms.

Wearing a binder.

No one looked twice.

Until the female-living-as-a-male was sparing and there was some ribbing.

"Like the ladies, do you?" one of the agents asked it.

The female/male narrowed his (her? no, his) eyes, but it lifted it's chin. "I rather think you owe him an apology."

The agent huffed, but the now-a-male smirked and led it away. "So if it isn't that you dislike the way I am, why have you been watching me?"

It thought about brushing the question off, maybe turning it into a seduction, but... "I don't know me."

The man raised an eyebrow. "You don't know you? Oh, you're--"

"The Black Widow, yes," it replied.

The man bit his lip for a moment. It waited patiently; didn't know where to go now. "I was born a woman, but you can see that I choose to be a man."

"Choose?" it asked. You could choose?

The man shrugged. "People disagree, but we're free to choose our destiny so why not choose who we'll be when we meet our destiny? Doesn't hurt anyone."

It left after thanking him. Clint was eating lunch, luckily. It sat down across from him and the agent Clint had been eating with quickly left, looking scared to death. Clint smirked. "You blew up one of his ops. Scared you're going to finish the job."

It smiled. It knew that it shouldn't get any pleasure from that, but it did. "You said that I could be whatever I wanted here."

"Yeah." Clint frowned. "Wait, you want out? I mean, no one will stop you or Phil will stop them, but..."

"There's an agent who identifies as male, but was born female," it said.

Clint blinked. "This...is out of my depth."

It tapped it's finger on the table top. "Where do we find help?"

Clint took it to a public library. It tried to explain--it was outside, outside couldn't help--but Clint insisted. An hour and a half passed while Clint looked through books, mumbling to himself about outdated information and people who lived in the dark ages (something about institutions), but eventually there were two books on an old table. 

They were surprisingly helpful.

Clint jerked away when they dropped the books on the table. "All good now?"

They smiled. "Yes. Thank you."

There was still a long way to go. They had a whole future now to figure out how they would meet their destiny, but at least they had the beginnings of a proper, comfortable identity. Their female physical shape had a certain power they would not give up, but that was not the whole of who they were. They were more complex than a simple single definition.

They had been a girl once. 

Then an it.

But now, on the road to their destiny, they were both and neither and cherished the fact that they were finally making decisions about their own life.


End file.
